Valuable Article Well Worth Your Time and Consideration

National Advocates for Pregnant Women is headed up by the entirely badass Lynn Paltrow. In the above article, she talks about how the same anti-choice/fetal rights laws recently passed have negatively and dangerously impacted happily pregnant women, and how women who've suffered unintentional stillbirths have been criminalized for their health problems or other circumstances.

Here are some gems from Paltrow's testimony:

It is not possible to treat pregnant women and fetuses as competing legal entities in the context of abortion without undermining the health, wellbeing and safety of all pregnant women and new mothers.

...if pregnancy is viewed as a legal relationship between completely separate parties having separate, competing rights, shouldn't every woman who has experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth be questioned about the extent to which she may have contributed to that pregnancy loss and whether those actions or omissions constituted an appropriate legal waiver?

Pregnant women in more than 30 states includingSouth Dakota have been arrested based on the claim that a health problem, action or circumstance a woman experienced during pregnancy can be treated as child abuse of[sic] she continues to term, or murder if she suffers a miscarriage or stillbirth. Women in California, Florida, Utah, South Carolina, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and North Carolina have been charged with manslaughter and even first-degree murder for having suffered unintentional stillbirths.

I must confess, reading Paltrow's testimony slapped me awake. I've focused so much on the flip side of this, that discovering the impact of these laws on happily pregnant women (or women who have lost a child they so desperately wanted) has turned my worldview on its ear.

These are excellent talking points, folks, and I'm interested to know your opinion.